Two Local Taxi Applications Lead Fair Work on Digital Platforms in Ecuador

Two transportation applications arising from local taxi cooperatives and another from a cleaning company lead the fourth edition of the ranking of fair work on digital platforms in Ecuador, ahead of the most well-known and popular international applications.

The new classification in Ecuador of the 'Fairwork' project, coordinated by the University of Oxford (England), the Berlin Social Sciences Center (WZB), and the CTS Lab of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso), placed DigiTaxi and AzuTaxi in first and second place with 5 and 4 points out of 10 possible, respectively.

These two applications, promoted by conventional taxi cooperatives from the Andean provinces of Pichincha (whose capital is Quito) and Azuay (whose capital is Cuenca) in association with technology companies, obtained the highest scores among the ten applications analyzed.

They were placed in the first place thanks to the fact that they come from already organized cooperatives where the workers have considerable weight in the decisions of the organization, which has allowed them to have better conditions, be covered by local legislation, and be better served by the company. , according to the authors of the study.

"One of the things that for us are new in the region is how cooperative models are being 'platformed'," said María Belén Albornoz, professor at Flacso Ecuador and principal researcher at 'Fairwork Ecuador', during the presentation of the report.

In this study, the operating conditions of each application were evaluated according to payment, worker conditions, contracts, customer and worker service management, and fair representation of workers, with a maximum of 2 possible points. for each concept.

Cleaning 'App' guarantees a minimum wage

In third place in the ranking, with 3 points, is the home cleaning application Cleon App, backed by a company with a long history in the sector, which was the only one in the ranking that could demonstrate that it complied with paying its workers the minimum wage. interprofessional, set at $450 per month by 2023.

In addition to these three platforms, this year Cleon App, PedidosYa, SuperEasy, Didi, InDrive, Rappi, Tadá, and Uber, dedicated to home cleaning, home delivery, and parcels and urban transportation, were analyzed in this report.

Five of the ten platforms analyzed did not achieve any points (Didi, InDrive, Rappi, Tadá, and Uber), while PedidosYa achieved one point in this ranking thanks to the fact that it has created a subsidiary in Ecuador that is subject to national legislation, on the contrary. from other international companies that continue to apply legislation from other countries.

Affected by insecurity

The study also sought to understand how the serious crisis of citizen insecurity that Ecuador is experiencing affects platform workers, mired in an unprecedented wave of violence that authorities attribute to the rise of drug trafficking mafias and organized crime.

In this sense, the report revealed that four out of five workers on these platforms feel unsafe, while 50% have witnessed a violent act (assaults, robberies, kidnappings) and one in three feels stigmatized as dangerous or possibly criminal, especially delivery drivers who ride motorcycles and wear helmets.

Likewise, drivers try to avoid working after 8:00 p.m. local time, while delivery workers feel at very high risk when covering dangerous areas of the city.

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According to the study, there are very few companies that have made a danger map and tried to send their workers to risk areas, as they did point out that PedidosYa does.

Only one in four workers expect support from platforms to implement more security measures.

Law still pending

In this sense, the main researcher hoped that next year the draft Law on the Work Regime on Digital Platforms could go forward, which remains in the hands of the National Assembly (Parliament) and which has been based especially on the legislation of Spain and Chili.

However, he regretted that the legislation does not affect the transparency of the algorithms that govern these applications and that they are "the real bosses" of the workers of these platforms by rewarding with more jobs those who work the most and have the best scores, always under a commercial relationship and never a labor relationship.